recut
Quite liked this. Some pomp is lost and missed (especially the exploding Soviet and American boxing gloves at the start of the film), and there's some awkwardness regarding new footage, but Sly & co. draw out the most interesting dramatic aspects of the original film. It's a drama of three men insecurely watching each other — Rocky, Creed, Drago — homoerotic and surprisingly sad, with more weight given to the latter two than in the OG cut. About the world…
An aesthetically and tonally pure horror film, & more psychologically ambiguous than I think it's given credit for — Juno is villainized to an extent but not entirely, and Sarah is also shaded, with an implied death drive, to say nothing of her hallucinations. The criticized dropping or underdevelopment of these threads works in its favor, the psychology is lost in all that darkness, binds are loosened and masks dropped, the move into the primal deeply violent on a internal level…
Post-narrative. This is not to confirm the common (mis)conception that Fulci is narratively inept (this idea is directly contrasted earlier in his career: Don't Torture a Duckling is a fluid network narrative decades ahead of the vogue; Beatrice Cenci cogently layers differing flashbacks, investigations, and personal reflections). Rather, Fulci here begins his radical stage (culminating in the films he'd make in the 1980s) of dismantling linear plot in order to explore ideas or aesthetics.
Fulci, however, does not fully abandon…
There will be plenty of other reviews covering this film's themes, relationship to its predecessors, etc., so just a brief note on its form. Because what struck me, on first viewing (even on a sub-optimal rip), was its ability to inspire awe in the superheroic -- no small feat on a desktop screen, in a questionably chosen aspect ratio. Actual wonder in the spectacle.
The similarities to the Whedon cut only make Snyder's unique action that much more palpable. And…
